Thirteen

Priority Status

This morning, in foggy San Francisco, I wheeled my way up to Virgin America’s check-in counter, dropped off my pre-paid bag, and sauntered cockily over to the “Priority” security line. Not only did I have no idea what the Priority line meant or afforded, I had no idea what prompted the Airline Powers That Be to bestow me with such a status. So needless to say, despite my shaky nerves, I started off my trip on a positive note.

When I got to the Priority Entrance, I had to shuffle around a couple, a young man and woman standing in the middle of the hubbub. They were each thin and beautiful, in the way that 87% of San Francisco’s population is, and they were locked in a long, tight embrace. He was a few inches taller than she, and her mane of dark hair was buried in his chest. 

I’m not sure how I noticed all of these details. Was I standing and gawking? Maybe. I do enjoy some good people watching, and these two quickly had me entranced. After what seemed like minutes, she pulled away her head, but not her hug, to look up at him. The look on this mid-twenties-something girl was one that wore such intense emotion that I recognized it immediately. It was pain. She didn’t want to go, he didn’t want her to go. Her eyes were sparkling, puddled with tears, and they lingered there, looking at each other. Suddenly, I felt like an intruder, a passerby who had stumbled into this moment of longing and obvious love and cluelessly overstayed her welcome. 

I veered to the left, Priority Pass in hand, to take off my boots, get my full-body-sexy-scan, and go on to my gate; but I couldn’t stop thinking about the couple. My imagination spun wondrous webs of fantasy: she had come looking for a job so that they could be together, but couldn’t find one and had to trudge back alone to the East Coast. He was ill, and she had to leave him in a city with good medical care until she could save up enough money to support them both. They were forbidden from being together, because their families were in a Montague-Capulet war and forbade their love.  Mostly, though, I couldn’t stop thinking of that hug.

The way they were intertwined and leaning on each other spoke of a closeness, of a young passion, that was so familiar from times past. Times when no one was hurrying out the door to head to work or carpool to dance. Times when the most important thing was the person in your arms. But it was the look in her eyes when she pulled away that really got me. I said above that I recognized it immediately, and I did, with a jolt. It was such a look of longing and love, that it instantly transported me to the early and mid-1990s, when I was a young woman who allowed myself to feel that connected to another soul. 

I guess you could call it “young love.” A love unmuddled by hurrying, rushing, carpooling, meeting deadlines, balancing children on hips and in calendars. When it was not only okay to, but natural to devote yourself entirely (deeds, words, looks) to the person you loved. Nothing else mattered in the world today in that one moment for those two people. It was insanely special to witness. In that young woman’s eyes I saw me, the passionate, goofy, intense young me I used to know so well. Who felt love so deeply that it hurt. It mattered. It pervaded moods, emotions, words. It made me a richer, more passionate person. It rounded me out.

I’ve thought about it all day long, in the air, on the drive home from the airport, and now, as I write this. Perhaps I need to make more time to linger in a hug. To forget about email or calendars or Facebook statuses for a bit. Instead of pushing aside that intense part of me until there’s “time” to show it, maybe I should let it out whenever it feels like it, in the form excited giggles or spontaneous dinners out or even just a lingering hug.

Because life is a life worth living, but it’s nothing without love. To feel it should be to show it.

Now that should be the Priority.